CA World 2013 Shines Spotlight On Cloud Evolution

The IT industry continues to evolve. Cloud startups, innovative technologies and new business models are disrupting traditional IT and business economics alike. At CA World 2013[1] in Las Vegas last month, we had the opportunity to share industry insight from our cloud customers and highlight our approach to helping customers with their journeys to the cloud. Our key themes, Hybrid Cloud, DevOps, Service Oriented Architectures and emerging technologies like OpenStack, map directly to CA Technologies[2]’ global strategy.

At Rackspace we have long-standing relationship with CA Technologies. It has grown considerably over the last few years. That was evidenced by our large presence during CA World 2013. It started when we engaged a variety of CA teams early on to help with the relaunch of our Critical Application Services[3] in August 2012. Since then, we have participated in a variety of joint industry events, webinars and panel discussions; produced white papers; and most recently Rackspace CTO John Engates was featured in the opening keynote at CA World.

And along the way, we picked up some interesting insight from CA customers, partners and CA World attendees on their cloud adoption and perceptions:

Key Takeaways:

Cloud is a business model that is still emerging.
While many enterprise organizations have piloted individual cloud services or have pockets of innovation, many are still in early stages of evaluating technologies. Startups are disrupting traditional IT, but enterprises are smart to let the market consolidate around well-established, trusted services providers with a commitment to a customer’s success.

Public, Private, Hybrid Cloud – Which do I choose?New projects can easily start in the cloud. Traditional IT workloads need to been evaluated on a case-by-case basis. We do this with our customers through our Advisory Services. Cloud customers must work with vendors that provide choice, flexibility and transparency as part of their core competencies. The Rackspace Hybrid Cloud[4] blends the best of all worlds – public clouds, private clouds and dedicated servers – to offer infrastructure that is the best fit for a customer’s specific workload or applications.

Getting started is half the battle.Do something today. Do anything that is cloud-related – attend a webcast, read a case study or blog or follow industry leaders on LinkedIn and Twitter. Ideas and insight come from a variety of sources and people; find something and reimagine it in your organization.

To help get you started and to get up to speed with the hot topics at CA World 2013, check out these links: